Inspect and Improve Insulation Levels in Your Ohio Home Before Winter

Category: Tips for Your Home

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We all know how cold the winters can be in the greater Cincinnati area. Now would be a great time to take a moment to inspect and improve the insulation in your home before the colder weather arrives. Making sure that your attic and other areas of your home are properly insulated is a cost-effective way to ensure that your home is comfortable throughout the year.

Areas to Be Inspected

The easiest way to determine whether you need to add to your existing insulation is to schedule a professional home energy audit. A qualified technician will perform an in-depth evaluation of several areas, including exterior walls, floors, attic, basement and crawl spaces, for air leaks and other inefficiencies.

Your attic is usually the easiest place to inspect and improve insulation. Measure the thickness of the insulating materials. Cincinnati homes, which fall into Energy Star‘s Zone 5, should have three to four inches of insulating material with an R-value between R38 and R49.

For your walls and floors, you can determine if there’s insulation present by inspecting your electrical outlets with the following steps:

Turn off power to the outlet.

Remove the outlet faceplate and look around the outside of the outlet box with a flashlight to see if there’s any insulating material present.

Use a plastic crochet hook to pull out a sample of the insulating material to see what type was used.

The type of insulating material to use is dependent on where you need to beef it up. If you’re adding more to your attic, you may choose to go with material that comes in the form of rolls or batts which can easily be unrolled and installed.

Insulating materials are also available in loose-fill or foam-in-place, which is blown into walls or other inaccessible areas. Rigid foam is recommended for exterior wall sheathing and indoor sheathing for basements walls.